


Just A Nightmare

by a_little_push



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Silent Hill
Genre: Gen, Nightmares, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_little_push/pseuds/a_little_push
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes has plenty of nightmares, this is just one more of them... right?</p><p>(MCU meets Silent Hill)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just A Nightmare

You wake up and it’s late at night, the room is dark but there is just enough light to see the blank and boring but familiar ceiling of the barracks underneath London. It’s a rare moment to breathe during the war, a moment back somewhere that is ‘safe’ and ‘home’ (if a secret base underneath the city can be called that). You toss and turn for a few minutes, the chorus of snores from the other Commandos would usually be comforting but tonight it’s too much- too loud.

So you roll out of bed, dragging on a uniform while yawning. Might as well wander around a bit, see if walking will make you more tired. Or perhaps run across someone with some busy work that needs doing. If all else fails head to the range for some practice. Not that I need any, you think pridefully. Laugh under your breath as you leave the barracks.

In the distance you think you think you hear an air raid siren but that is unfortunately not an unfamiliar noise.

You feel a hot flare of anger towards the Axis powers but it doesn’t last long, your steps faltering as you stare at the walls. At first you think it’s because you’re still half-asleep, so you lift a hand to rub at your eyes and hopefully blink the sleep away. But what you thought you were imagining is still there when you open them again, but worse.

The concrete of the wall in front of you is melting away like it’s made of water, not turning into dust but dripping down and turning red as blood, revealing metal grating and blackness behind it where there should be foundation or more rooms or even just dirt. Just blackness that doesn’t have an end.

You turn around and all the walls are melting in the same. The ceilings and the floors, making you yelp and jump back, but there is no escaping it. In the distance but ringing in your ears are screams, tortured screams and you’d know what those sound like now.

Before long there is just bloody and rusted metal suspended in darkness around you, rattling like a chain-link fence when you take a careful step. The screams louder, echoing, but not enough to hide the sound of the ‘floor’ as it rattles with each step forward. Walking because your only other choice is stay standing where you were.

You don’t even have your weapon, didn’t think you’d need it to wander the base but now your fingers are itching for it. For anything to defend yourself, and it isn’t long before you risk prying part of the wall off, a length of metal piping. And while it isn’t much, it does make you feel better, something to wrap your hand around.

As you turn a corner there is suddenly a wall, a real solid wall with a door in the center of it. No handle but it creaks open just a crack as you approach. You try to look around the wall but all you see is blackness. Glance behind you and there is no way back, the metal grating forming another wall a foot or two behind you. 

Through the door then.

You push it open and for a second you are confused because you are standing in the middle of the barracks, and for a moment you think you were asleep but there is still the weight of the pipe in your hand and a now closed door where there shouldn’t be one at your back. Swallowing hard, you look around the room and barely manage to stifle a scream.

Most of the cots are overturned and torn apart like a wild animal had been let loose in the enclosed place, and scattered like discarded pieces of meat are the bodies of your friends, of the Commandos. You can’t tell where one body ends and another begins, but what you can see and identify are their faces.

Falsworth, Morita, Jones and Dernier, Dugan..

You swear their eyes follow you, silently accusing you for not being there but you look away. 

Dreading it but you don’t see Steve’s face among the gore spread across the room. How you didn’t see it when you first stepped in you don’t know. There is blood dripping from the ceiling and you force yourself not to look up, don’t want to see.

The only cot untouched in the room is the one you use, and on top of it is what looks like a tarnished silver key. Approaching you see it has your name carved into the side of it and even as you reach for it, you don’t want to pick it up. Every part of you rebels against touching it, let along taking it with you.

But you do anyways, tucking it into your pocket where it feels like a hot brand weighing it down.

Turning towards the door, the door that is supposed to be there, you push it open and the hallway is metal and blood and blackness. But you have no other choice but to keep going. This time as you walk you keep glancing behind you and if you watch as you walk you can see the metal creeping slowly behind you making it so you can’t back track.

That’s fine, you don’t want to go back to that room anyways.

The next time you run into a door that creaks open you stand in front of it for a few minutes, just staring because you don’t want to step through it. Don’t want to see what horror is likely on the other side but as with everything else in this hellish whatever it is, you have no choice and you push the door open.

Inside is what looks like one of the many offices in the secret London base, nothing toppled over or torn to shreds. No blood or bodies as you look around, taking careful steps as your eyes flick around waiting because there has to be something. Suddenly you hear a scream of a woman that cuts off in a wet sound and you jerk, but turn and run towards the sound through stacks of shelves full of boxes and papers because you have to try and help even if that doesn’t sound like someone who can be helped.

You don’t scream this time either but only because you don’t want it to notice you, a monster (what else could it be?) that seems to have the shape of a man and the limbs of an insect and huge curving claws, a horrifying amalgamation of animals that shouldn’t exist and your brain is having trouble processing does. It is crouched over a body and you look at the body now, it’s a woman and the- thing has it’s jaws chewing a hole through her back and somehow pushes itself through the hole it’s made, poured itself under the skin.

The woman’s body awkwardly stands now, claws sliding through her fingertips and in the moments before the ripping jaws destroy the face you can see it is- or was- Peggy. Her eyes are dead but here is that same look in them. Accusing. Why didn’t you run faster? Why didn’t you save me?

But then the thing wearing Peggy’s skin lunges and you lash out with the pipe you are still holding, connecting with a wet sounding smack. But it goes down and you don’t waste any time running, don’t wait for it to get back up or see if there are more around. Slam into the door you came through in your haste and struggle to open it, almost crying out in relief when it opens and you don’t even care you are back in the metal suspended hallway.

The door shuts behind you with a final sounding click and you hear a loud thud on the other side, hand flexing tighter around the metal pipe as you flinch.

Heart pounding, your steps are quicker then they have been so far. Want to get away from that room with the monster wearing Peggy’s skin, even if the image will stay in your mind. For now you force it away, tucking it away with the slaughter in the barracks room.

The next door is one you recognize unlike the last two and you really don’t want to step through, don’t want to see how the person you are sure is inside is dead. But you push the door open and step into the workshops. There is a low rumbling noise of something mechanical left running and the smell of something burning.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone or anything inside the space but you don’t trust that, pipe held in your hand at the ready as you turn in a slow circle. Only once you’ve turned in a complete circle do you see the dancing shadows cast by fire and you take a few steps in that direction, the smell of burning getting stronger along with the smell of- meat?

When you turn the sharp corner, you lift a hand to cover your mouth as you feel your gorge rising. It hardly looks like a person anymore, what were once arms wrapped ‘round and ‘round with barbed wire, digging all the way through flesh down to the bone to suspend the body from the ceiling over the fire that is burning from nothing but fills this part of the workshops. 

There are no clothes, burned away and the skin that remains of the legs is black and twisted and looks like it would snap off at the least amount of pressure on it. Your eyes move up the body involuntarily, because you don’t want to look. The higher your eyes travel the less burning (cooking) there is but it still is barely a person anymore.

Only the face is intact and that face is of one Howard Stark, eyes closed you swore but when you blink and look again they are open, staring and you back away. Don’t want to know what his dead gaze is accusing you of. You want to apologize but no words come out when you open your mouth.

So you turn away, tearing your gaze away and walk away shaking.

The smell of burned meat lingers in your noise and you can’t stop shaking, harder to push that image away with the others. All of them trying to crowd their way into the forefront of your mind, walking without thinking until you literally bump into another door. Hadn't even noticed you were back in the suspended hall, the screams and rattles and smell of blood all blending together.

The door this time is different, more ornate and wouldn't have looked out of place stuck somewhere in a church. There is a lock and the key in your pocket burns hot again, as if it is reminding you it exists. 

Fearfully you pull it out and slide it into the lock. It fits perfectly and turns in your hand all by itself. You push the door open, and the room looks- normal.

But you don’t trust normal now, especially as the door slams behind you. You hold the pipe tight and turn around like you did in the workshop. Only this time you stop halfway through because the door you came through is gone and on the wall is Steve, and this time you do scream. The sound bounces around the room and you flinch.

Pinned by cruel looking spikes through his wrists and ankles, through the center of his chest though that can’t be holding him up at all. His chest cavity is open, everything carved out leaving him an empty shell. When you look up at his face, his eyes are wide and scared but dead.This time you don’t look away, taking his accusation.

You hear the sound of the monster that wore Peggy’s skin and the smell of burning flesh and drip-drip of blood off a ceiling. 

You scream again—

**Author's Note:**

> This is a standalone story I wrote for a friend who rps as Bucky Barnes in response to a "Send my character a nightmare" prompt on tumblr. It was supposed to be only a few paragraphs long. It became longer then that.


End file.
